Collecting information about your computer?

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Am I alone in thinking this is so not the way to be heading with the problem of unregistered accounts? Talk about an invasion of rights......

Lewis

Hrm, it's certainly illegal... or at least the part about displaying payment information is here. There needs to be an opt out clause in this.

Dude, you were screaming your head off for a solution on griefers. This sounds like a simple hardware profile. It will mean they know it's you, even on a disposable alt. I run lots of commercial software that takes a similar profile, for licensing reasons.

Even when you get what you want you're not happy.

It's a hash of your computer's serial numbers (eg processor serial number, MAC address), - same thing microsoft gets with Product activation.

From what Robin said, it's a one-way hash, that means they cant recover that information out of the information they are sent. (sort of a complex way of saying: "It's a number dividable by two, 500 can be subtracted from it", etc - without actually telling the number)

It actually sounds like a half decent idea for keeping people out - since IP addresses and MAC addresses are both easily avoided, this takes a bit more cunning to get around.

Well, it isn't illegal if they tell you first.

Probably IP address, but they need to spell it out.

Recording it to check on alts is fine, publishing it isn't.

Well, that makes more sense than the IP. Do you know that this is what they are going to do?

Ok invasion of rights? dont get me wrong that is your opinion and I repsect that. Do you not understand that everyweb site on the net can do this and you agree to hte terms buy visiting the site. The music industry uses a similar process to identify p2p song transfers, now sl is going to use it to help track and keep ppl accountable for there actions in game.


Correct me if Im wrong but dont you think knowing that SL & LL can get your computer ID will possibly stop some of the "annonimous" griefing?

I really dont want my computer ID floating around but hey if it helps keep the grief and scams out of sl the Im all for it. As for the legallity of the disclosed info I hope LL did the research on it and are within their rights. But there again we can only sit and wait to see what happens.





*edited for typos(god ya gotta love the overlooked words)

The only thing they are going to publish is your "verified status", from what I understand. Any hardware info is only available to Lindens:

Hardware Identification
The Privacy Policy now points out that if you install Second Life software we'll be collecting information about your computer. The point here is to allow us to verify a unique identity and therefore better contain griefing by multiple accounts from one system. This information will not be available to non-Linden employees, and will only be available to Linden employees in an encrypted ("hashed" format.

From Robin's blog:

"Hardware Identification
The Privacy Policy now points out that if you install Second Life software we'll be collecting information about your computer. The point here is to allow us to verify a unique identity and therefore better contain griefing by multiple accounts from one system. This information will not be available to non-Linden employees, and will only be available to Linden employees in an encrypted ("hashed" format."

Which is seperate to this:

"Account Information in Profile
We currently include information about your account in your Second Life profile, including your account name, age, and type (e.g. Lifetime, Resident, Charter). Beginning with tomorrow's release (1.10.5(1)) we will also identify your account as being one of three types:
No Payment Info on File - account was created with no credit card or Paypal
Payment Info on File - account has provided a credit card or Paypal
Payment Info Used - credit card or Paypal on account has successfully been billed

This information is being provided so that other Residents will be able to see what degree of commitment you've made to the Second Life community, at least as it's expressed in your willingness to provide us with payment information. Please be assured that we will not be releasing any real life identifying information such as name, address, credit card or bank account details.

Future releases of Second Life will allow Residents to decide if they want to allow accounts which are essentially anonymous (no payment information given to us at registration except email address) to access their parcel."

The bit that's a problem (IMHO) is the fact that your "level of commitment" will be displayed in your profile for anyone to see. I don't really care what LL record (within reason of course) provided they can keep it secure, and right now, I doubt their ability to do even that.

I read it as publishing your payment level too... probably including tier. We'll see though, no doubt.

yeah, I got that, but they weren't more specific than "information about your computer", as in "your comp's serial number" or "your MAC address".

No it doesn't say anything about publishing that information. Just whether you have supplied payment info, and whether you've been billed successfully.

I don't see anything about tier, more like three states of verification based on payment:

Beginning with tomorrow's release (1.10.5(1)) we will also identify your account as being one of three types:

No Payment Info on File - account was created with no credit card or Paypal

Payment Info on File - account has provided a credit card or Paypal

Payment Info Used - credit card or Paypal on account has successfully been billed

I agree with this completely.

The information being used needs to be made crystal clear.

And, frankly, I don't find this to be a very good solution. A more self-contained system, like a randomly hashed client ID when Second Life first installs, would be "right" in my book.


Solving the problem with anything approaching spyware is only going to annoy long-term residents that, quite frankly, never asked for this in the first place.

Yes, they did say hardware though. My guess, a combination of components. The Native Instruments software I use, takes a system profile based on things like your hard drive. Probably similar. They may not say the exact combination for security reasons maybe.

Yes, and I don't think this is a good solution.



This was not what I asked for as a solution.

Lewis

There are going to be people who balk at this, though. (already have, in this thread). Is the next thing, "we aren't doing this anymore because our statistics found people stopped the registration process at 'we collect information about your computer'", heh? Is that less invasive than a #CC or something? I don't know.

You have a problem with them identifying your machine? Why?

Do you want them to be able to identify griefers or not? How do you propose they do it? Surely any form of verification has to check something, somewhere?

On a related note - I am wondering if this is retroactive. In other words, I am currently not paying a tier, but I have paid in literally 1000s of dollars in the past 3+ years. I wonder if we have to be billed after this change goes into effect to get the profile status of info billing info on record or successfully billed?

I personally do not care for the idea. I feel that there are would-be demagogues out there that are going to use this as an angle to try and stratify the resident base. In effect, that is what LL is doing, and thereby creating an arena for more flamefests.

I'm sure they will. But is it a bad thing? Your machine already identifies itself when it access a web page, doesn't it? And is knowing what a component of your computer is really personal information?

Speaking for myself, I don't mind them collecting info about my machine, as far as I can tell, they already do. My issue is the apparent creation of classes. I can just see the threads now...

"These people are favored because of their billing status, yap yap yap!"

I think it's entirely possible to collect and store the data, and to use it to curb alt griefers without going the extra mile of connecting it to profiles.

They're just asking for trouble, in my opinion.

"These people lock us out because we don't own land, the nomads are second class citizens!"

Its lik this before if you didnt have a CC or some means of verifying your age and such thenyou didnt play! Now its going to be if you dont want to let us verify your pc your not going to play!

IP adsresses arent likely going to be used, when I started reading the posts i had one IP now I have another one! My ISP changes mine every two days as does most high speed internet providers!

More than likely IMO they are going to get your computer ID just like all the companies that allow free trials of their programs, except LL is going to use it to limit the amount of accounts created from the one ID. Seems like a sure fire way to curb some of the scams and griefing.
Now your not going to be as annonimous as you once was!